Will the robots ruin us? – The Sydney Morning Herald

Thanks to automation a life of potential leisure beckons whether we like it or not.

Once one combines the advances in computing, big data mining, artificial intelligence, speech recognition, driverless vehicles and robotics it's not too hard to foresee that the impacts of the digital technology revolution may have, to date, been simply a clearing of the throat.

Don't just take my word for it, A 2016 report titledTechnology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used To Be, prepared for global finance giant Citi, stated that "a job is considered to be 'exposed to automation'or 'automatable'if the tasks it entails allows the work to be performed by a computer, even if a job is not actually automated". On that basis, the researchersfound 47 per centof current US jobs at risk.

According to Futurist.com, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) data shows that, averaged across the world, 57 per centof jobs are susceptible to automation. This rises to 69 per centin India and 77 per centin China.

The low-risk jobs tend to be those which emphasise social orcreative skills. Which puts me in mind of the cuts to funding for the humanities subjects over the last few decades. Can you spell"irony"?

Commenting on the Citi report, one expert said: "Focus less on pure academics, and more on creativity and presentation skills. The enormous likelihood is that however good you are at STEM subjects there are likely to be people in the world who are infinitely better than you this is to say nothing of the computers that will eventually take over all STEM related roles. Communication skills, creativity and the ability to adapt to change are hugely more valuable and a much better differentiator medium term."

In other words, an emphasis on levels of education and a shift in the educational areas of importance are going to be needed to prepare people for employment in a highly automated future.

This is usually the point where one starts to hear some variation on the words "strong leadership will be required to help us meet these challenges". Feeling confident anyone?

In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies(1988) historian Joseph Tainter examines the collapse of three complex, sophisticated societies, the Western Roman Empire, the Chacoan and Mayan civilisations. Heposits, broadly speaking thatpast a certain point of complexitysocieties do not collapse despite their levels of sophistication but because of them.

While "collapse" is perhaps an overly dramatic term, we have already seen the struggles that numerous industries media in particular have faced when confronted with digital disruption. If the impacts of automation hit harder and faster than what we have already seen, will there be the ability or the will or the consensus to pivot with the necessary speed?

How will the transitions be managed? Even if the idea of a universal wage gains traction, how will governments generate revenue to supply it if their taxable base starts to dramatically dilute?

Drawing on Keynsian parallels, Andy Haldane, Chief Economist for the Bank of England said in 2015 that a longer-term solution to countering the impact of automationwould be to embrace "a world of progressively shorter working weeks, where mini-breaks become maxi-breaks".

Mind you, he also pointed out that the lowest paid jobs would be at the most risk so, a life of potential leisure beckons, assuming you don't starve.

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Will the robots ruin us? - The Sydney Morning Herald